Give Peace a Chance
by Night Monkey
Summary: A misguided but very well-intentioned alien race tries to foster peace between the Doctor and his greatest foe. Things don't go as well as they hoped.


I'd like to thank everyone who reviewed my last story. You're a very kind bunch over here, and you really made me feel welcome in the fandom. Thanks!

Summary: a misguided (but very well-intentioned) alien race tries to foster peace between the Doctor and his greatest foe. Things don't go as well as they hoped.

* * *

Rauha was a planet that had not known armed conflict, civil unrest, or anything worse than a boisterous food fight in hundreds of years. It was supposed to be one of the greatest utopian, pacifist civilizations in the galaxy. It was supposed to be a haven for any lonely traveler that happened by, so long as that traveler bore no ill-intent.

So what the bloody hell was a Dalek doing here? And why were these supposedly peaceable people dragging him towards it and it towards him?

"You don't know what that thing is! It's built to kill, and nothing else! It's a Dalek, and it wiped out my whole planet!"

The bulbous-headed Rauhan that held the Time Lord's left arm said, "That one creature destroyed your species, all by itself?"

"No, not that particular Dalek. But together they did! Gallifrey, my home, gone because of them!" the Doctor shouted.

"THE DOCTOR! EXTERMINATE!" the Dalek shrieked.

"Don't you hear it? It wants to kill me, to make my kind extinct for good. If you give it half a chance, it'll do the same to you."

"We haven't given it a chance. We've disabled its weapons system," the Rauhan that gripped the Doctor's right arm said.

"EXTERMINATE!"

"Stop!"

"DESTROY THE DOCTOR, ENEMY OF THE DALEKS!"

"Let me go!"

The two aliens that held the twisting Doctor looked across the room to the pair that held the seething Dalek. Via telepathy afforded to them by the massive, highly-evolved brains that lurked inside their unsightly swollen heads, the quartet decided to rework their plan a bit. The enraged pair they held between them burned with a rare hatred. The Time Lords and the Daleks were the bitterest of mortal enemies, and peace between them would require more extreme methods than simply making them face each other from a comfortable distance.

Said extreme methods consisted of locking the pair in a room, and leaving them there (supervised, of course, on the outside) until they talked through their differences.

As soon as the door slid shut behind him, the Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and attacked the door. After a few seconds, he surrendered. The door was locked with a deadlock seal, and his screwdriver was useless. In frustration, he kicked the door. Which also failed to open it.

"YOU WILL DIE, DOCTOR!"

Oh, right, the Dalek. He'd nearly forgotten. The Doctor turned around to face the lethal metal monster.

"I'd like to see you try, what with your weapons system offline," the Doctor said.

The Dalek's whisk-like blaster pointed at the Doctor. Despite the alien hippie's assurance that the Dalek could not fry him, the Doctor was more than a little unnerved by the death-ray aimed at his chest.

When, after several seconds, he was not killed, the Doctor relaxed. The Dalek was only enraged further by its weapon's impotency. Bred into its genetic makeup was a desire to see the Oncoming Storm dead, and it was powerless against its genes and its race's collective hatred.

Using its least-appreciated weapon, the Dalek turned its plunger on the Doctor. He knew the Dalek could suck a person's face off with that thing, and didn't want to experience it firsthand. To avoid any unpleasant face-sucking, the Doctor calmly walked to the other end of the cramped room, putting roughly ten feet between himself and the Dalek.

"Why don't we just do something like this: this half of the room is mine and that half is yours? We don't cross the center line, and we don't suck our appendages onto each other."

Outside, among the psychic big-heads, the Doctor distinctly heard the words "great progress" spoken. He mentally scoffed.

The Dalek's reply was to cross the line with all the audacity of Caesar crossing the Rubicon and attach its plunger to the Doctor's shoe. The Doctor, who dearly, dearly loved this pair of shoes, fought to retain his sneaker.

"Stop it this instant," the Doctor said, in his best threatening voice.

"I WILL NOT OBEY," the Dalek countered.

"Give it back!"

"I REFUSE."

The Dalek began to reverse. To keep his shoe from being pulled off, the Doctor was forced to hop, one-legged, after the pepperpot terror.

As he hopped like a fool, the Doctor heard the big-heads muttering less-hopeful things. We should have disabled the plunger. I didn't know it was dangerous. Should we intervene? Things of that nature.

For the better part of ten minutes, the Dalek pulled the Doctor around by his shoe. The exertion finally began to wear on the Time Lord's leg, and he was forced to surrender to the malevolent salt shaker's greater stamina. With a few shakes of the ankle, the Doctor slipped out of his shoe. The Dalek retreated with its prize.

The Doctor plopped down and crossed his arms. He glared at the sneak-thief Dalek. Though the Dalek had no face with which to exhibit emotions, the Doctor knew the bloody pepperpot would've been smiling smugly if it could.

"I hate you."

"THE FEELING IS RECIPROCATED."

"Oh no, this is the kind of hate reserved especially for Daleks that steal a Time Lord's favorite shoe. You could never hate like this. You haven't even got feet, let alone shoes."

In response, the Dalek drew half the sneaker into its plunger, squeezing the shoe and threatening to ruin its perfect fit. The Doctor slammed his fist against the floor. That shoe had walked on the surface of dozens of aliens worlds and had survived eons of time travel. He would be damned if it was going to be squashed into a misshapen mass of canvas and rubber inside a Dalek's powerful suction cup.

"Spit it out!"

Like a wad of wet paper expelled through a straw, the shoe suddenly shot out of the Dalek's plunger and directly at the Doctor's perplexed face. Before he could duck, the shoe's sole struck him square in the nose. There was a crack that signaled the shoe bullet had broken his nose and more confirmation of the damage when blood began to flow down his face.

The Doctor swore and clutched his bleeding nose. His fingers did little to stymie the flow, and drops of red soon stained his jacket—which was dark blue and hid the blood well enough—and his collared shirt—which was white and emphasized the spreading red blotches.

For a second, the Doctor was at a loss for words. Then he thought of what Rose might have screamed in a situation where her clothing was ruined.

"You _tosser_!"

The Time Lord seized his shoe from the floor and charged the Dalek. He brought the abused, misshapen shoe high over his head, as though he were about to crush a spider with it. The Dalek had no time to react before the shoe slammed into it.

Even with the full wrath of the Doctor behind it, a shoe was never going to damage Dalekanium. That didn't stop the Doctor from trying. While the Rauhans watched their attempt to bring peace blow up, the Doctor whaled on the Dalek's shell. Inside the armor, the blobby, cephalopod-like Dalek was subject to nothing more unpleasant than a faint gong sound every time the sneaker hit its protective shell.

The Dalek eventually lost patience—the constant ringing was beginning to annoy it—and the killer pepperpot rolled away from the Doctor. He pursued it, banging away at the nigh impenetrable armor. The Dalek swung its turret-like body around and tried to swat the Time Lord. He stayed out of range of the plunger, and darted forward to smack away whenever the opportunity presented itself.

"YOU WILL DESIST OR YOU WILL BE EXTERMINATED!" the Dalek screamed.

The Doctor's response was to swing at the Dalek's eyestalk. The nimble eyestalk dipped below the blow and the Time Lord stumbled. He ended up staggering to the wall, both his hearts beating rapidly.

"I'm not desisting. I'm not. I'm just taking a breather," the Doctor panted.

"YOU ARE DEFEATED, DOCTOR."

"No, I am _not_! Just give me half a moment."

"EXTERMINATE!"

"Shut it!"

"EXTERMINATE!"

"Play me a new note, why don't you?"

"EX—"

The four Rauhans had seen and heard enough. They opened the door, and the Time Lord scampered out. Before the Dalek could escape, they sealed it inside the room.

"We are no longer sure peace is possible between your races," one Rauhan said.

"What was your first hint? The threats of extermination or the bloody nose? Someone owes me a new shirt, by the way," the Doctor said.

The tallest of the Rauhan began to remove its draping outer garment. The Doctor hastily declined. He knew what the Rauhan species looked like underneath their clothing, and he had no desire to see it in person.

"Where did you even get that thing in the first place?" the Doctor asked.

"One of our ships found it, heavily damaged, on a neighboring planet. We repaired it as best we could, though our kindness did nothing to gain its trust or improve its temperament," the Rauhan said.

"'Course it didn't. You could show a Dalek every kindness in the universe and that wouldn't change it. Locking people it wants to kill in a room with it won't help, either, for any bright ideas you might have in the future."

"Created only to hate…" the alien said sadly.

"And exterminate everything it hates, which is everything not Dalek. You, me, every other species. The only smart thing to do it to kill it," the Time Lord said.

The Rauhan talked telepathically amongst themselves before the four of them simultaneously shook their heads.

"We do not kill. Not even Daleks."

"Then make sure it never escapes. If it does, your whole planet will face extinction."

The four aliens nodded. They would contain the Dalek, keep it alive, and continue their endeavors to change it, vain as the Doctor proclaimed their attempts to be. The Rauhan, not occupied by warfare or social problems, had all the time and energy in the world to spend on their rehabilitation program.

"I suppose this is goodbye. As they say on the planet of my friend: shalom, paz, fred, and peace." The Time Lord bowed to the Rauhan, and then headed back to the TARDIS.

Once he was safely inside his blue box, the Doctor sunk to the floor. He wiped his nose with his sleeve, further destroying the jacket. That was alright; the TARDIS had an expansive wardrobe, and he was getting a little tired of the color blue, anyway. While he was making himself over, he'd also need a new pair of shoes, maybe red ones this time.

The Doctor pulled himself off the floor and approached the control panel. He wasn't quite sure where to plot a course for—he was in the mood for something grim, like a solar-system-swallowing supernova or perhaps a thermonuclear test—but he wanted to leave Rauha. He had a bad feeling that made both his hearts leaden and heavy in his chest.

A bunch of big-headed, space hippies naïve enough to believe they could reform a Dalek… As much as the Doctor didn't want to admit it, he doubted the planet would be such a thriving utopia if he were to return in five years. Sighing, he punched in the date of a large star's explosive death in a planetary system far, far away.

The TARDIS faded out of sight. As the Rauhan dispersed back to their daily tasks, not one of them noticed the hiss of the Dalek's prison door sliding open.

* * *

Since I have no experience naming alien planets and species, I looked for an Earthly translation of "peace" that looked sufficiently weird. I settled on the Finnish "rauha". To any Finns out there, I mean your language no disrespect.

The languages the Doctor wishes the Rauhan peace in are: Hebrew, Spanish, Norwegian, and English.


End file.
